Michael wrote in to say:
I ordered a Bulbdial Clock kit from your company on Wednesday Feb 7, 2013; it was waiting for me at the door on the 9th. Suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased with the rapid shipment of the product.
Following the html instructions I was able to assemble the project without errors the first time and got a working Bulbdial clock in about 2 hours (my whole family thinks it is cool).
Once again thanks for being there for an old kit builder.
Thanks, Michael!
Over at Made With Molecules, our friend Raven has published a set of excellent free downloadable Dopamine Day valentines. From the back:
Celebrate Dopamine Day on Feb 14 by engaging in activities that increase your dopamine, like adventure, fantasy, friends, and chocolate.
From the complete overkill department, evilandy posted in the forums about his project which hooks up an Alpha Clock Five to a GPS module, a WiFi module, a WWVB Atomic radio receiver, two TXCO RTC modules and two microcontrollers because, well, we’ll let him tell you:
I wanted a clock that would display precision time and date in “all” worst case scenarios. If this clock does not show the precise time then it’s time to gather up food, water, ammunition, and the family and head for the underground bunker!
The keyswitch, fire button, and covered toggle are nice touches. Thanks for sharing your project, evilandy!
Our friends John Baichtal of Make Magazine, and Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler of Wayne and Layne have recently released their collaboration, Make: Lego and Arduino Projects, with a forward by our other friend, Erin RobotGrrl Kennedy.
If that all-star cast isn’t reason enough to check it out, the book is about combining Lego and Arduino, key gateway drugs into engineering and electronics. To accompany the book, they’ve created Bricktronics, a library for use with Arduino and Lego and a set of accessories to help with the physical interfaces, including a shield that allows you to plug your Lego NXT accessories into your Arduino. In an article over at Make, John points out that models and code from some of the projects from the book are up on github, so you can already get started playing. Neat stuff!
Chris Shen‘s first solo show just opened at 18 Hewett Street in London, and he shared with us about his piece, Infra, built using a Peggy 2:
The idea was to build a infrared display out of old remote controls, using the existing infrared LEDs as pixels of a low-res display. 625 old remote controls are mounted in a metal frame connected by individual wires to a modified Peggy 2 that runs the whole installation.
The main change to the Peggy was to solder molex headers instead of LEDs: this is to allow the wires to be easily plugged in and out of the board which is necessary when dismantling and reassembling the piece. Yes, all 625 remotes are numbered so they can be removed from the frame for transportation! The current and voltage was also adjusted fo IR LEDs as opposed to visible LEDs.
While researching, the main thing I was looking for was the ability to play video (live) on a low-res matrix. I looked into various ways of doing this but once I found the Peggy 2 kit it gave me confidence to go ahead with building Infra because of the open-source nature, existing work done by Windell, and Jay Clegg’s video Peggy mod.
I connect all the remote controls via 500 meters of speaker wire to the Peggy, held into the frame by a simple looped elastic band. The circuit is mounted to a sheet of acrylic as the circuit bowed with all the wire attached. Each remote had to be opened to solder the wire directly to the LEDs legs. The wire is then routed out through the back of the remote and closed back up.
Preparing all 625 remote controls was the most time consuming part, each was different and often not very clean especially once you get inside. Although looking at all of the remotes individually revealed another side to the project which I’ve documented through a small run of books.
Thank you to Chris for sharing about how you made your piece with us. His exhibit will be up through February 3rd, 2013, so if you’re in London, go see it soon!
The designers at Pensa have released their fantastic homebrew computer-controlled wire bender, the DIWire, as an open source project, and have just posted on Instructables showing you how to build your own. The DIWire can take wire from a spool and automatically form it into arbitrary 2D or 3D shapes you have designed digitally.
We had a chance to see the DIWire up close and in action (and also to meet the folks behind it) at last year’s Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire in New York. The DIWire is exciting not just because of what it can do, but also because it represents the first of its kind in do-it-yourself CNC machines.
In the last decade, we’ve seen an explosion of DIY CNC mills and routers, and a separate explosion— at least as large —in so many now-familiar 3D printers. But the DIWire represents a whole new class of DIY machines, completely different in function and form. Will the next decade also bring us an explosion in homebrew CNC wire-EDM, water jets, embroidery machines, turret punches, and lathes? We certainly hope so.
In addition to the instructable, documentation for entire DIWire project, including both hardware and software, is hosted at Google Code.
Simon Jelley, the winner of our Peggy 2 Clock Concept Contest back in 2010, posted about how he took his prize and built his proposed clock: a video display of an analog clock face based on the clock in Victoria Station.
It looks even better in its physical manifestation than it did as a concept.
Thanks for sharing your project, we’re thrilled to see that you made it happen!
Our friend Jonathan Foote, after a disappointing experience with a commercially available timed cat feeder, hooked up one of our Art Controller relay boards to an automated candy machine and posted about the project.
Jonathan says, “The resulting hack will reliably and elegantly deliver meals to my favorite pet.”
RoboGames is now accepting registration for the 2013 competition which will be taking place on April 19-21 in San Mateo, California. Registration deadline is April 1. They’ve also put out a call for papers, demos and talks for the academic symposium with a submission deadline of March 16.
Another related— and very important —event to register for now is BarBot, which will be held in San Francisco on March 1-2. This cocktail robotics exhibition is an amazing amount of fun, and serves as a fundraiser for RoboGames. Registration ends on February 22 for BarBot entries, so it’s now time to get to work on your advanced fluid handling systems!
At RoboGames, robot builders are rockstars and heroes. It’s one of the few places in our society where engineering and technical ingenuity is exalted in a way that is usually reserved for sports and movie stars. It is open to anyone to participate, and the community of robot builders is incredibly welcoming. They provide huge amounts of information and advice to new and experienced robot builders. There are over 50 different events to compete in, so there is a robot type for everyone. And it’s not just combat: There’s robot soccer and sumo, navigation and weightlifting, painting and climbing, firefighting and hockey, maze solving, and the all-important bartending event.
If you have ever thought about building a robot, now is the time. Build your bot and bring it to RoboGames, and maybe soon you’ll be the one autographing robot parts for admiring fans!
Update 1/23/2013: BarBot tickets are now on sale!
Photo credits: Last Rites and the Electric Boogaloo by Annie Blumenberg (CC-BY-ND), Yellow art robot by Patrick Giblin (CC-BY-NC).
Miguel, the great guy behind PancakeBot, a CNC pancake printer made out of Lego, is running an Indiegogo campaign to help bring the whole family all the way from Norway to the Bay Area Maker Faire. We met Miguel at the New York Maker Faire last year, and got a chance to see PancakeBot in action.
Even if you can’t support the campaign, you should check out the video to see the machine in action, cheered on by enthusiastic young pancake aficionados. And come to Maker Faire in May, where we’ll hope to see Miguel and family with the awesome PancakeBot.
